An Imperial Affliction
by amazinglilli
Summary: I am Anna Charlotte Mills. My life had always been what others might describe as a bore, that is until I got cancer. Now, my thoughts are stars that I cannot possibly fathom into constellations. The world feels so strange. People say that when one dies, they leave a story behind, so I have decided to write my own. At least someone will remember me, maybe.
1. Chapter 1

Hi, my name is Anna Charlotte Mills. That basically sums me up. I live in a regular neighborhood, in a regular flat, with a regular personality. Nothing about me is interesting. Nothing is extraordinary. Usually I like to be thought of as normal, but in all reality I'm just average, ordinary at best. The difference is that normal is typical, the state of living up to people's expectations. Instead I'm just ordinary with nothing even remotely unique about me. Everything about me screams standard, bare minimum, basic, except the fact that I have cancer.

People say that cancer is a disease and will eventually be cured, but I don't believe that. Cancer is the side effect of relentless mutations that made the diversity of life possible. No matter how much we try there will always be a cost of our technological advancements. We can't all play God. Whether I like it or not eventually cancer will become me and I will become the side effect. I am the side effect. Nothing I do or say is going to change that. It doesn't matter if I die today, tomorrow, or a year from now. I will die eventually, everyone does. Us side effects are a way of life, just like any other natural disaster.

"The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars, but in ourselves, that we are underlings" -William Shakespeare

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**A/N: Well, I hope you all liked it! Please review! I love my fans and I would love to know what you think (don't worry about being harsh, I love constructive criticism). I am always trying to improve my writing in any way possible so PLEASE REVIEW.**

**If you like this story then I suggest you check out my fan fiction(s): Innocent In Water and When I Stay**

**I love my fans so spread the word and never give up what you love. Fan fiction for life! :) -amazinglilli**


	2. Chapter 2

One thing I've learned since finding out I have cancer is that it's bloody offal. I know you shouldn't expect anything more from a disease that makes your body practically kill itself little by little, but that doesn't mean I can't say it.

My mum's glass eye turned inward as she planted yet another tulip in one of the small light wood flower boxes hanging from the inside of our chipping white painted windows. Yellow, pink, and purple flowers sprinkled colour over the rich dark brown soil that filled the boxes almost to the brim. Their tall bright green stocks held up high, reaching towards the rays of sun peeking in through the windows.

"Oh, hi, sweetheart," she said, turning to me with her good eye, her false one still looking at the flowers. "Did you sleep well?"

"I guess," I said, dragging myself into the living room and settling down like a lump on the couch, the comforter from my bed still wrapped around my shoulders like a cloak. I turned on the television and surf through the ten channels we have on our black and white speckled screen.

Mum has never believed in modern technology. I'm just lucky we have a functioning refrigerator. She's always been more into nature and older beauty that she says, _"has escaped the minds of the present generation."_ I guess that is not entirely wrong. I mean, people my age do seem to spend all their time watching television, reading gossip magazines, and buying expensive clothes downtown. Personally, I've always preferred our small little flat.

My eyes fluttered around slowly until shutting and once again I give into the endless drowsiness of cancer.

Yes, I have a right to say it sucks.

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A few hours later my eyes squinted deeply as the bright lights shinned in my face as I woke up. My entire body was sprawled around the couch like ivy on an old brick house. One foot was dangling off the cushion like a man with a death wish and the other up in the sky like the photo from before he jumped. My head was twisted about 180 degrees and resting in the crook of my elbow, both set in the middle of the couch. I slowly inched myself into a better position before getting up from the sunken in imprint I had left in its squishy white material.

A small breeze slowly drifted in from the window, now only opened a crack to let in some fresh air for the plants and us cooped-up vegetables. It seemed like my mum had turned on every light in the house, or at least as far as I could see, my eyes were still almost shut from the brightness. I started walking towards a noise in the kitchen where I assumed my mum had resided to. As I grew closer all different kinds of wonderful smells started to fill the air.

"Oh, hey, baby. How was your nap?" she asked, stirring a pot of what looked like chicken noodle soup, my favorite. The smell was almost temping, but then the sickness came back to me and I vomited all over the floor. "Oh, I'm so sorry," she said rushing over to me before helping me back over to the couch, yet again. "I thought that having your favorite food might finally give you some interest in eating." She placed an extra pillow beneath my head and laid another blanket over me, like I had the flew of something that could be cured by just keeping warm.

"Yeah, well, I am," I said, bitterly. "I just can't."

"Well, you can if you want to sweetheart—" she began to say, but I interrupted her.

"No, I can't!" I yelled. "Y-you just don't understand!"

She looked at me with both her real and fake eyes. Both of them pointed strait at me. Her eyebrows pointed down in a sad little pout to match her mouth, like a small little puppy left out in the rain. I instantly felt bad. She dragged her feet out of the room without saying a word, but that's okay, her sadness did the talking. It screamed in my ear, constantly, telling me that I ruined her life. That everything bad that happened to her was my fault, like what happened to her eye, except that one was real. That one wasn't just part of my dreams.

We didn't talk at all for the rest of the night. She just sat in the kitchen crying. I could hear her sobs through the thin walls of our seemingly empty apartment, along with the noises, the ones I couldn't ever get out of my head.

_"It's all your fault, Anna!"_

_"You ruined her life!"_

_"Yelling at her, seriously? Haven't you already done enough?"_

_"You should hate yourself. She probably already hates you. Your such a burden."_

The sad part about cancer is the fact that all those voices are true. It was all my fault. I had ruined her life. I yelled at the only person in the world who still cared about me. Everything that had gone wrong in her life was my fault. My dad left her because she got pregnant with me. I was the reason she needed that glass eye. She would never be able to see from the right side of her face ever again. I did hate myself, and she should have too. See that's what cancer does, it pulls people apart because I was nothing, but a burden, a side effect, a nothing.

I just laid there for hours, snuggled in the excessive warmth of the blankets that covered me, the ones she rapped me in. Slowly one small clear tear dripped down my cheek as I fell asleep, the voices still yelling at me with their loud bullhorns that just wouldn't shut up, not even in sleep.

"None knows the weight of another's burden." -George Herbert


	3. Chapter 3

It was a sunny Monday afternoon the first time I saw him. I was altering the arrangement of books and knick knacks in the front display window. His pristine glossy brown loafers scuffed against the floor as he entered the store, a bell ringing above his head. He wore a grey tailored suit with a slim black tie and black stockings, which in my opinion were not the best decision considering the brown shoes. His otherwise perfect face grasped a plump green apple like The Son Of Man as he walked in and he continued eating it throughout his journey to the counter where my mother was residing. He ran one hand through his long, yet well kept, jelled hair as he plucked the apple from his mouth and smiled at my unsuspecting mother. They began to converse as his fingers continued their child-like tendency of fiddling with the apples crisp skin from below my mothers gaze.

I couldn't hear their conversation, but it didn't look good, from here. They were smiling, and she was blushing. She never did that towards any other male customers. It almost appeared that she fancied him, something I had never seen before. Although she never liked to talk about my father, there were never any other men in her life. Almost simultaneously both of their eyes drifted towards my mothers prized pot of bright orange Dutch tulips.

Oh, how mother loved her tulips. They were her favorite flowers, as far as I knew, but the ones in that pot were special. When she was younger my papa had given her a packet of seeds for her birthday. She treasured them like a first daughter, watering the soil, perching it in the perfect spot, and even talking to it occasionally. The day it finally bloomed papa died. He wasn't sick or troubled, he just left. No doctor knows why. He was only forty seven years old.

Every year since then, on her birthday, she bought another pack of seeds and cared for them just as much as she had the first time. When it bloomed, the fiery red-orange released a gentle puff of summer air from its pursed lips and slowly sang a delightful yellow pigment from the edges of each soft petal. The tulips hora of sweetness illuminated the otherwise dull room with its lovable completion, until winter when it crept back inside its shell to be ready for another upcoming season of rebirth.

I stepped a bit closer, trying to hear their conversation, but only was able to hear a few words.

"...flower shop up the street..."

"...Dutch tulips..."

"...tomorrow night..."

Then all of a sudden he looked at his watch, dropped his card and tip in a jar next to the register, and quickly walked out the door, leaving me to wonder if he was even there at all.

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Outside, the sky had settled to dusk. Deep hues of blue enveloped the prettier shades of pink and purple that had draped the sky only a little while before. I sat on the edge of the wooden display window, looking out onto the city. Traffic moved down the narrow street at a steady pace, the groups of headlights flowing like a river of lightning bugs. The older, more respected, businessmen had been traded in for younger versions, covered in tight shiny clothes and unnecessary vintage sunglasses.

A flannel blanket clung to my shoulders as I hugged it close to my body. I had just finished my last round of chemo a few hours before, and I was getting the usual chills. the track lighting above me flickered before turning off as my mum hit the switch. Her slightly heeled tan loafers shuffled across the floor and to the front door to flip the OPEN sign to CLOSED.

She slowly made her way back to the register and brought the tip jar upstairs to our apartment to look through it and find the _Dutch Tulip Man_'s number.

I sniffled and ran the blankets soft quality across my dripping nose and sighed.

That was when it all got bad. That was when it always went bad. The sniffle, wipe, and then _BOOM!_ all the rest of the stuff they warn you about when you have chemo.

The thing they don't tell you is how bad it really is. They don't tell you how it hurts to move because your intestines feel like their being pulled out of you, inch by inch. You might just get fatigued. They don't tell you not to eat or even think about eating anything or else you'll vomit, over everything, twice. You might just get a little sick. They don't tell you what it's like to have your veins turn black by the time you wake up, or sudden shooting pains through your entire body. You might just be sore. They don't tell you what it feels like, when everything around you is falling apart, to loose your hair. At first it feels brittle and weak, and then it just starts coming out like fur balls. Soon you look like someone ran you over with a lawnmower, and you might as well just shave it off while you still have some dignity.

They do tell you what happens it you get cut and how sick you can get if you're infected. You don't want to find that out.

They don't tell you how to function when you feel so weak that you can get up, or move, or breath at all. You might just feel a little tired. They don't tell you how you're supposed to get up every half hour to use the bathroom when you feel like crap, because everything, including air, is going straight through you. They don't tell you what it feels like to loose all feeling in your leg, and think that you might have lost it to the demon itself. You nerves might be effected. They don't tell you how every breath feels like it's through a tube of sandpaper.

They tell you that your fingernails get flaky and change colors, but that isn't what you want to hear.

They don't tell you that you feel bloated enough to be a water balloon. They don't tell you that your entire life will change.

"Without health life is not life; it is only a state of languor and suffering - an image of death." Buddha

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**A/N: As I write, I usually write one scene at a time and sometimes post a scene before the entire chapter is done so if you feel that your missing something in the story just check. It should be there.** **I usually try to post at least one scene at a time because that way I can keep all of my fan fictions on track as well. Feel free to check them out. Thanks for understanding. You're all the best. -amazinglilli :)**


	4. Chapter 4

"Sweetheart, you've got to get up," mum whispered, sitting on my bed, stroking my arm. I feel sticky and uncomfortable. Her touch feels awkward against my skin, almost forced. I shift up, sitting with my back against my headboard, and open my eyes, regretfully.

"What?" I asked, peering at the clock. "It's 7 in the morning mum, what could be so important?"

"Don't skive. We've got to be to the doctor's in half an hour."

I sigh, heavily, shutting my eyes once again, momonterally. "I haven't got the faintest idea what you're talking waffling about. Dr. Chaney said he could meet me next week."

"Yes, but he had a cancelation and I thought you might want to see him earlier," she explained.

I groaned. "Well, you're wrong," I said, covering my head with my pillow and trying to sneak back into be.

"No," she said, grabbing the pillow and whacking me with it, "You're coming. Get dressed." She pulled down my covers and left, leaving me cold and annoyed.

I regretfully got out of bed, moving over to my closet. Opening up its protected contents, I grabbed a simple pale grey tank top and slipped it on, letting it hug my torso, making me feel safe. One of its straps stayed exposed from under a long sleeve toupe sweater. I scrunched its sleeves up to my elbows and jumped into a pair of tight black jeans with skinny ankles, tucking them into beat up cream high topped converse.

Mum sat at the kitchen table, enjoying her morning bowl of Weetabix a cup of Twinings. I grab my favorite blue knit cap from the living room sofa and pull it on. The pot of water still heats on the stove. I pour myself a cup and set up across from her, dipping a bag of Twinings in the cup before adding a single swirl of honey into its broth.

"You're looking fit," she commented, sipping her tea. "Anything special?"

"Nothing in particular, but you sound like you might have an idea," I noted.

"Don't be cheeky. It's just, you look a tad peculiar, not yourself," she said.

"Well," I smiled. "That's always nice to hear."

* * *

The entire hospital appeared to be quite bland and cold, lacking the capacity for feeling. White walls and furniture filled in the necesities for the building, but no excess was given to any which room. It was all very impersonal and clean.

Mum and I sat in two lobby chairs for about an hour, waiting for Dr. Chaney to finish with his first pacient, whom had a mental-breakdown in the middle of their visit. I just watched the telly and read Glamour Magazine. When our name was called, we were escorted into a small closet, by the looks of it. The space held a shocking resembelence to solitary convinement chamber, used unjustly for the mentally ill in prisons. The walls were white with two fold-out chairs and a bench covered in paper. A metal medical cabinate sat between the folding chairs, giving off a creepy vibe, like that from Backmask.

A nurse came in to take a sample of blood, something not unfamiliar to me. They probably have about 5 liters stored away for a rainy day, left over from testing. About 20 minutes after that, Dr. Chaney entered, carrying the news of remission on his shoulders. Mum and I almost didnt believe him when he told us. I sat their frozen, too shocked to speak.

I left the office still like that, mum hooked onto my arm as I traveled on in a daze.

_I was finally free. It was finally happening. The worst was over._

He said that i still had to go in for a few more radiation therapy sessions, just to be on the safe side, but other than that I was done.

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**A/N: There's more coming soon, so be pacient. Sorry it took so long, but I've been working a lot at my new editor job at The Worcester Journal (a young literary magazine). Check it out if you want. Please, reply to what you think of the chapter. Thank you.**


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